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Growing a park at the airport: step by step

It’s been about a month since Santa Monica sued the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to confirm the City’s rights to control the future of Santa Monica Airport. The FAA still has a month or so to answer the City’s complaint, but in the meantime a lot has been going on that’s relevant to whether the airport will become a park.

For one thing, the FAA is losing political support, which could be critical as decisions are made in Washington. Although our representative in Congress, Henry Waxman, has said he won’t make any pronouncements about what he thinks the future of the airport should be until he feels he knows the wishes of his constituents, that has not stopped him from taking an increasingly aggressive attitude toward the FAA’s indifference to the rights and safety of those who live near the airport.

As reported in the Lookout News, the congressman, in response to concern from residents that a jet could overshoot the runway and devastate homes, recently wrote the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) requesting that the NTSB accelerate its review of the tragic crash in September that killed Mark Benjamin and three others.

Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Karen Bass, whose district borders the airport and includes West L.A. and Mar Vista, sent a letter Nov. 7 to the FAA calling for the agency to consider allowing Santa Monica to close the airport after expressing her conviction that the “airport represents a danger to the health and safety of surrounding residents.”

While the FAA is committed to defending aviation, it has to pick and choose which battles to fight and how hard to fight them. Notwithstanding its efforts, hundreds of airports have closed in past decades, and it must have some institutional knowledge about when a cause is more likely lost than winnable. The FAA is used to congressmen and women who want something from it, like funding for a new radar tower. When the representatives no longer support a local airport, then the FAA has to start wondering whether it’s worth using its resources to defend it.

While all of this is going on at the rarefied Congressional level, Airport2Park.org, the local group formed to advocate for turning the airport into a park, is picking up support locally. The Westside Neighborhood Council of the City of L.A. passed a resolution two weeks ago supporting A2P’s efforts, if the airport closes, to build a park there.

At the same time there’s been other news in Southern California that is relevant to turning the airport into a park – news about two other park projects.

First, in the big picture department, last week the L.A. Times reported on a proposal in Long Beach to turn a piece of underused freeway into a park, to serve a neighborhood that is “boxed in by refineries, rail yards and truck routes.” According to the Times, “city officials are considering a radical makeover of west Long Beach that would involve ripping out a one-mile section of one of the Southland’s first freeways, now mostly used by truckers, and replacing it with a long ribbon of green space.”

I bring this up because I still hear from people who think that turning the airport into a park is a fantasy. Meanwhile, all over the world cities are doing great things with the gritty leftovers from the industrial era. I.e., if Long Beach can turn a mile-long piece of freeway into a park, then Santa Monica can do the same thing with the airport’s mile-long runway, which fewer people use than the freeway.

The other story is a cautionary tale that falls in the “avoid this” department. Perhaps you’ve been reading about the troubles that the City of Irvine has had with financing the “Great Park” that it planned to replace the 1,300-acre El Toro air base. Irvine expected developers to pay for the park, and built 200 acres with the initial cash it got, but after the 2008 market crash there was no money to finish the park. Now Irvine is debating an offer from a developer to pay for a scaled-down version of the park in return for the right to build about 4,600 homes.

The lesson: don’t rely on developers to build important public infrastructure. There is no free lunch. Design a park that’s worth spending taxes on. Get over the idea that the public realm isn’t worth paying for, and we’ll have a public realm that is worth paying for.

3 thoughts on “Growing a park at the airport: step by step”

Is there a plan that does no harm? It seems that people usuing Franks approach for the last 20 years has helped to increase traffic congestion and built a lot of very ugly buildings. We need to slam the door on that old approach. We need to focus on doing no harm. If the neighbors near the airport can help stop the city from spending our own money to chase the FAA then we can all get behind the effort. The idea that we spend millions on a law suit is a drain on our city’s resources that heavily perpetuates a climate of mis-management and poor planning. There is a way to do it right, so far im not seeing it.

In my opinion,
This is the problem. Because the airport issue is not taken up as an initiative or some form of public contract first, it remains as a debate. If it remains as a debate and if there is no codified plan, then the door is open for needless mistrust and eventual sellouts and sell-offs. The current discussion in Chambers of the 5th and Arizona property, is an example of the foolery that we will face. And, the ugliness of the 2 hotels that was just approved is what we will end up with.

Moreover, the entire question is far-fetched. The risk reward factors are drastically not in the favor of closing the airport. The only motivation therefore, for spending millions in attorney’s fees, is to justify development on other sites around town; a ploy to massify and densify, and to perpetuate very high staff salaries.

If prior to embarking on this road to nowhere, the community made a simple contract with itself to codify 80% of the total 225 acres as a great park, and then provide for 20% development; we then, could negotiate -with one acre(or less) – of the 20%. This acreage could be offered as a great and deserved incentive, if the developer or entity, or combined entities, was able to, by some slim chance, deliver to the city, the entire airport acreages. It is then done with no risk to the city, and therefore relieves us of a cash burden that only benefits city employees and potential scavengers, if the lawsuit is surprisingly won in its current trajectory.

This is called risk management, a far contrast from what we have now; unsophisticated backroom folly. We become involved in an insidious doctrine to capitalize on our land and promise in order to feed the whims of the curious and pockets of staff and developers. Maybe what we have now is sophisticated in terms of sneakiness; some are good at being sneaky. But, it is not sophisticated in terms of creating a desirable outcome, against all odds, without risk.

We have an asset that is potentially worth 3 billion dollars. We need a codified plan. We should discuss it and maybe ask our Council to put it on the ballot.

The risk reward factors are way out of line. In my opinion, voters will reject spending millions in this way whole heartedly as soon as they have the first opportunity. Voters do not want to spend cash this way. There is an alternative if we have the mind to find it. If we construct a way to pay for the suit using other people’s money we are the heros.

-Consider also that there is no benefit to win control over the title to the airport unless we want to make changes to its use. This is not a secret and yet the Council has been sold on the idea that they should authorize the expenditure. Certainly, the risk reward should be defined with an acceptable community contract first, even if it is later determined that the airpot should remain open.

The neighbors of the airport would stand a much better chance if a huge incentive was given to a preselected group or entity, done in such a way as to have that entity pay and carry all costs to the city we all win!